Pàgines

31 jul. 2010

Les statues meurent aussi

Title: Les statues meurent aussi

Director: Chris Marker and Alain Resnais

Writer: Chris Marker

Year: 1953, France

Running time: 30 minutes

Plot summary:

Les statues meurent aussi (Statues Also Die) is a French documentary film by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais released in 1953. It was sponsored by the panafrican magazine Présence africaine. Willing to answer to the question "Why African art is at the Musée de l’Homme, while Greek or Egyptian art is at the Louvre?", the two directors denounced the lack of consideration for African art in the context of colonization. The film was censored in France for eight years because of its anti-colonialist approach.

"When men are dead, they enter history. When statues are dead, they become art. This Botany of death is what we call culture". So begins the controversial documentary which raises the question of the difference between Western art and African, but particularly focuses on the reasons why occidental art tends to underconsider or destroy what it does not understand.